Jamie spreads holiday joy

We were riding home in the car last week, I think on the way back from our traditional Monday after school ice cream, when Jamie, out of no where said. "Dad, it was kind of funny watching you struggle to put the cardinal on top of our Christmas tree." This nice observation then led to some thinking about presents under the tree. Jamie then began saying, as he likes to, that on Christmas he can get up whenever he wants. I said, that wasn't quite true but that he could get up at 6 (he would prefer 4:30 or 5). Connor, on the other hand, is like I was and figures the presents will still be there so why not stay in bed. This, in turn, frustrates Jamie because he has to wait for Connor.

So Jamie then said that when he was twenty (read: generic age signifying adulthood) he and Connor wouldn't be living together so this wouldn't be an issue anymore. I pointed out that they very well might live together, noting that his mommy and Aunt Carolyn had lived together when they were about that age. "Yeah!" Connor said. Jamie actually cleared liked this idea quite a bit, but said "Fine. But I won't wait for you to open presents!"

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

Well, we're getting ready for the big Costello road trip up north. A big part of this is the possibility of snow, so let's hope for some well-timed (ie not days when we're on the road) inclement weather. We went to New York last winter and the combination of snow and cousins was by far the biggest hit. When we flew into New York last year it was extremely cold and had just snowed quite a bit. As soon as we stepped outside of baggage claim at Newark, Jamie found a hill of rather unlovely snow and insisted on climbing it before anything else happened.

Once we got into the city we braved the extreme cold (really, it was very cold, not just to us soft Houstoners) and headed a few blocks north to Central Park. The wind was so intense that at one point as we waited to cross the street Connor burst into tears, I think in part because the feeling was so unfamiliar. As soon as we hit the park the boys just barreled into the snow, much of which was not, ahem, altogether pristine. Jamie was fearless in climbing snow and ice covered hills. Connor needed a bit of an escort but was excited too.

From there we set out overland to the Central Park Zoo, getting there just in time to see some penguins and the snow leopard. Sarah and Connor went ahead of Jamie and I because Jamie insisted on ascending every hill and snow bank there was to be found. Really he showed impressive fortitude against the sub-freezing temperatures. Eventually we made our way out of the park and the boys discovered the joys of NY hot dogs. It turned out not to be the end of our Central Park adventures, because we came back with a friend after visiting the Natural History Museum. They liked the dinosaurs well enough but it was basically a prelude to finding a hill to go sliding down on their bellies.

But all of this in turn was the prelude to their favorite thing of all which was having a snowball fight with their cousins in Armonk. They have literally not stopped talking about it since. So let's hope for snow!

Holiday logic

The boys are, as a rule, not into getting rid of things. I don't suppose that makes them very unique, but Jamie is particularly tenacious about wanting to hold on to stuff, and Connor of course takes his cues from big brother. When asked to purge some old unused toys Jamie has learned to mobilize his big brown eyes and to look at us and say, quietly, "But this is very special to me." Hard to resist and he knows it.

Another bit of the psychology that may be in play here was recently revealed. There was a used book drive at school, so Sarah asked the boys if there were any books they wanted to donate. Jamie, predictably, said no. Sarah then explained that this was for kids who weren't so lucky and didn't have any books. Jamie replied, "I know. I don't want to be one of those kids!" Gotta admit there's a certain logic there.

The confusion goes on

I want to preface this post by saying that it is very clear that Connor is an exceptionally bright boy. He recently scored a kind of absurdly high number on one of those standardized tests. Not that these really mean anything of course, but it's just one indication which is consistent with things we've observed. His reading for instance is proceeding at leaps and bounds. He seems to jump ahead almost on an hourly basis these days.

But his Kryptonite, it would seem, remains animal identification. Now, James could identify animals at a distance before he could talk. I can remember him feverishly signing "dog" on one of our early morning walks when his age was still counted in months. I also remember him presciently signing bird after studying penguins swimming for a few minutes.

But Connor, well...A few weeks ago we were at Brazos Bend State Park and in the nature center they had a stuffed raccoon. Connor looked at it and said, "Awww, look, a fox!" Then last weekend we were at the baseball field and someone in the distance walked by with a black and white border collie. Connor excitedly said, "Look Daddy!!! A baby cow!" I really had to struggle to keep a straight face and answer his excitement while gently pointing out that it was a dog.

I have this fear that there is a secret test to become President in which you have to correctly identify 5 animals and Connor will be cooked. Maybe he'll just get a nice, difficult Cabinet post.

Cello update

Jamie continues to work at cello. We're starting to realize, and we suspected this, that it's going to be a struggle, especially with practice. Jamie can be really dogged when he wants to (see posts on baseball), but there are some challenges with this. I think it has to do with his tendency to not want to do things until he is a master of them. We have seen this with him since learning to walk, which he refused to do until he could run, and learning to read. He would not work to sound out letters the way Connor does, but instead waited until in essence he had memorized a huge number of words, or gotten to the point when he could sound them out intuitively, so that when he did start reading he jumped quickly to an advanced level.

The problem, of course, is that this won't work for cello. At least not initially. I do wonder if once he gets through this face of getting the basic mechanics down, he might also move forward quickly. One of the other obstacles is that he doesn't like working on the mechanics by themselves. He wants to play songs. I'm hoping that this will serve us down the road as well. He seems to think in terms of the entire unit rather than each other sections. Things have advanced in the past couple weeks as his posture has advanced enough that his teacher is letting him use the bow, and he can pluck out two songs pretty much in their entirety.

So stay tuned, as it were, for more progress reports.

Did you mean?

So Sarah, technologically savvy as she is, has joined the twenty-first century and got herself a smart phone. Among many things, it has had the effect of pleasing the boys because they get, under special circumstances, to play Angry Birds. The first night we let them do this, each one would play while books were read to the other. Connor was so excited he could hardly stand it, and as he played he kept muttering "Angra birds, angra birds, angra birds".

It is astonishing to see the skill with which he has adapted to using the phone but sometimes he gets in trouble. To keep a grip on the phone he has to really wrap his wee hands around it so that sometimes he inadvertently hits a button and is navigated away from the game. This displeases him and we are called in. This happened last night. I was in the other other room but I heard a series of anxious/angry noises and went into check it out. I soon saw that he had somehow activated the voice recognition function, which had kept a record of his utterances. It looked about like this:

"Did you mean: ooooo ooooooooo?"
"Did you mean: oo ooooooh?"
"Did you mean: ooooooooo?"
There were about 15 variations of this and then:
"Did you mean: hell yeah?"

Not quite sure what produced this last one.

Watch out ladies!

Connor is in this funny stage between being big boy and a little guy and it often comes out when we play with friends where there is a range of ages. He actually is quite skilled lately at moving between older and younger crowds. He keeps up pretty well with Jamie and his buddies, but has gotten really nice with younger kids, and actually is able to be something of a leader with them and to show some real patience.

Other times, of course, he loses it a bit. We were over at our friends' house last night, and they have a little girl who is 2. While the grown-ups were eating dinner, he came in and announced that she had been beating him on the head. "Well, Connor," her Dad said, "she shouldn't do that, but you need to learn that girls can be dangerous." Connor thought about that for about a half-second and answered confidently, "Well, I know karate!"